A wide variety of power seats are currently available for automobiles and vans which have an extended range of motions, including forward-back, tilt and elevation-lowering. These seats are generally used by fully ambulatory drivers and front seat passengers. In larger vans, "captain"-type chairs may be employed which have a custom base permitting the passenger seat to be rotated to a rear-facing position by a manual swivel with locking engagement to lock the seat in one or more positions.
A wide variety of people using vehicles as passengers or drivers require some sort of assistance in entering and exiting the vehicle. For those who are significantly impaired, there are a wide variety of wheelchair lifts and ramps, and combinations of drawbridge-type scissor ramps and lowered floor vans. An example of a rotary lift is shown in Braun et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,664,585, which is offered as the Swing-A-Way.RTM. rotor lift by The Braun Corporation of Winamac, Ind. Braun also offers slide tube type van lifts and ramps. The L220 transit vehicle lifts with fold-up platform features include Czech et al. U.S. Pat. No. 5,180,275 of the Braun corporation. The U.S. Pat. No. 5,261,779 issued to Goodrich shows Braun's dual hydraulic parallelogram wheelchair lift for vans and transit vehicles. Once in the van, the wheelchair-bound person can use a variety of assist devices to permit the transfer from the wheelchair onto a special seat within the van, or lockdown of the wheelchair itself without passenger transfer.
However, there is a much greater population of persons with less severe impairments who nevertheless need some assistance entering and exiting vehicles. These people include those who are physically handicapped due to illness, injury, or inherent conditions, persons who have suffered varying degrees of strokes, and a large portion of the aging population whose infirmities make it very difficult for them to enter and exit vehicles, particularly high floor vehicles such as vans and transit vehicles. Even fully ambulatory persons have some difficulty entering and exiting certain vehicles, particularly low-slung sports cars. But the problem is exacerbated in the case of vans having a much higher floor and seat level which basically entails a climb up onto the seat followed by sliding the body laterally into position on the seat. As compared to the number of persons who are fully handicapped and in wheelchairs or electric scooters, the semi-ambulatory population is ten to twenty times larger.
Exemplary of the approaches used to address vehicular entry/exit seating are U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,483,653 (Waite); 4,155,587 (Mitchell); and 4,733,903 (Bailey).
However, none of these approaches address the problem of entry/exit from vehicles having higher floors. Nor do they provide for proper orthopedic ergonomic alignment of the seat to the semi-ambulatory user. That is, in these devices while the seat may extend laterally from the vehicle in a more or less complex motion, they do not lower. And more importantly, in these devices the leading edge of the seat is not tilted downward so that more seating area is exposed for the semi-ambulatory person to contact. In these devices, the semi-ambulatory person is confronted with the non-tilted leading edge of the seat, and must lift themselves both up and over the leading edge, and onto the seat, and then back into the seat back in order to be properly seated. These devices are simply not designed from the point of view of the semi-ambulatory user nor for use in high-floor vehicles.
Accordingly, there is a need for a companion seating assist device to assist semi-ambulatory persons to be seated exteriorly of the vehicle, and then to be retracted into the vehicle and rotated to the forward position, which device provides ample clearance for feet and legs, and not only lowers but tilts to present an ergonomically improved seat mounting angle.